Tuesday, August 01, 2006

It's not land Israel wants - it's WATER

It all makes sense now. Land, Water, Energy - Israelis want TOTAL control over all the Middle East's resources and they'll stop at nothing to get it.

[Extracted from a paper prepared [in] October 1997.]

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Some experts have suggested that rumours of Jordanian and Syrian plans to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River were the principal cause of the 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states. Others believe that Israel's systematic exploitation of the water resources of the West Bank has been the main reason for its reluctance to consider a peace agreement based on the exchange of land for peace, and that the control of the flow of the Litani River is the real reason for Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon.

The Litani, located entirely within Lebanon, derives its hydro-political importance from the fact that it runs within easy tunneling distance to the present Israeli-Lebanese border. It runs actually less than 10 kilometers from the Israeli controlled upper reaches of the Jordan. Israel had hoped to connect the Litani with the Jordan, thus enabling it to pump those waters into Israel proper.

The plan to seize the Litani has a long history. It had been articulated for the first time in the 1920s by one of the Zionist organisations but the objective became more serious following the 1967 war, as Israel wanted more water than had been garnered from the war. The timing for the capture of the Litani in 1978 was logical: if South Lebanon were secured at the time, the waters of the Litani would be available for Israeli use by some point in the mid-1980s, when Israel anticipated that the waters captured in the 1967 war would be fully used up and more water needed. However, as things stand now, the coveted waters of the Litani remain undeveloped for Lebanon and in limbo for Israel.

On the whole, the 1967 war secured the capture of about 900 mcm/y of water for the Israelis, or nearly half of their water use.These waters are now so many arguments against any kind of settlement with the Palestinians which would involve restitution of that water. . .

Israel Radio, Israel Army Radio and a senior Israeli government official said ground forces would reach the Litani river, about 30km north of the Israeli-Lebanese border. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to discuss decisions of closed-door government meetings with reporters.

Ephraim Sneh, a senior Labour Party lawmaker, indirectly confirmed the planned push until the Litani. Asked by Israel Radio how long troops would hold on to that territory, up to the Litani, Sneh said: “We are not talking about days we are talking about longer, but not about months.”

However, two other government officials said Israel’s security cabinet, which met late yesterday, only approved taking a smaller area of land, a strip of about seven kilometres (four miles) from the border.

Sneh, a former deputy defence minister, spoke hours after top cabinet ministers approved a broader ground offensive into southern Lebanon.

“The goal is not to occupy Lebanon,” Sneh said, adding that the goal is to hold onto the territory until a multinational force can be deployed to the Israel-Lebanon border.